Luna 24

Luna 24 was an unmanned space mission of the Luna program, also called Lunik 24. The last of the Luna series of spacecraft, the mission of the Luna 24 probe was the third Soviet mission to retrieve lunar soil samples (the first two missions returning samples were Luna 16 and Luna 20).

The probe landed in the area known as Mare Crisium (Sea of Crisis). The mission successfully returned 170 grams of lunar samples to the Earth on 22 August 1976.

• Launch Date/Time: 1976-08-09 at 15:04:12 UTC
• On-orbit dry mass: 4800 kg